Sure makes time go slowly if you sit and watch the forum page every day.
When you're busy working, time travels at a much faster pace... or so it seems.
From a practical standpoint, nobody's really been waiting that long. After all, Carrara 8 is still fairly recent.
Just sayin'

Sure makes time go slowly if you sit and watch the forum page every day.
When you're busy working, time travels at a much faster pace... or so it seems.
From a practical standpoint, nobody's really been waiting that long. After all, Carrara 8 is still fairly recent.
Just sayin'

Yeah, Dart, please don't take offense. I love you to death, and I'm not trying to be one of the voices of negativity, but saying Carrara 8 is new is just wrong. If you look back at the release dates for the last few versions of Carrara, then C9 should have been out almost a year ago.

Yeah, Dart, please don't take offense. I love you to death, and I'm not trying to be one of the voices of negativity, but saying Carrara 8 is new is just wrong. If you look back at the release dates for the last few versions of Carrara, then C9 should have been out almost a year ago.

I guess. And, no.. I wouldn't take offense.
But I've been following this whole beta thing, watching them cross many boundaries that were really bizarre hurdles. So from a "Watching the Clock" (or calender, in this sense) standpoint, sure. Maybe we should be on version 9 by now. I do know that whether anyone likes it or not, the wait could not be helped. We were there. They were fixing and fixing - and then out came a new need to have a lot more compatibility between Carrara and Daz Studio - which was also still being developed to help it fit nicer into it's new role, hence 4.5
So then they had to switch gears again and get all of the content that has already been released for Genesis - as well as Genesis itself, Plus DS and Carrara fit into this new format. And they pulled it off - considering the enormity of the task, in a really impressive time frame. I couldn't be more proud of them!

All during this development phase, there was an entirely different war going on behind the scenes. Poser.
Poser users were upset with Daz. Daz was under the impression that SM would include support for TriAx, at first - but then they decided against it. No biggie - you just can't use Genesis in Poser. Ummm... that sort of thinking might be sound if you ask a pile of users who are happy with having Poser and DS, but the Poser community was pretty upset.
Cliff worked (literally) night and day on this Genesis to Poser CR2 super tutorial with accompanying CR2 file. That was intense. It's amazing how much this stirred everything. He put immense effort into making it perfect.
Daz had to do something - nobody else was going to. What would you do? You can't just give the finger to the masses, right?
So in the middle of having Carrara on the verge - they just announced that they felt that they were putting the finishing touches on it when, all of a sudden... silence.
DSON took full precedence. It had to. I have a feeling (and this is only conjecture) that more tweak needed to be made, internally, to the whole Genesis system - and likely DUF and DSON. If you think about it, if all of this HAS to happen, It darn well better happen BEFORE they release the new software that handles it - or they'd have to run yet another beta. No. Pool the developmental resources to get everything right.

Anyways, I'm not really trying to be defensive, and if I am, it's only because I truly commend these people for their efforts. In truth, it's more that I can sympathize with the situation as it happened right in front of me. We were all there.
And above all, I truly don't mean to offend anyone, especially Kodiak, Manley Stanley, or anyone else. I think Wendy already knows that I'm incapable of intentional offending or hurting the feelings of another living soul.
Thanks for that Wendy girl! (and pardon me for using your cool gif again, but I just like it!)

I'll Waffle and Howl it into shape!
Man, that is one awesome little animation. I just can't get over how cool it is. It's right up there with Cliff Bowman's awesome little marionette doll avatar he had. Remember that little cutie?
Editing yet again:
Geeze Wendy. Check out that lighting and shadow. It's just right!sorry for carrying on about it so

There's never been a x.5 release of Carrara, ever. I would not be surprised if C9 is what we get, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Seems like every other version of Carrara has been problematic/ambitious.... Leaving a lot of hanging bugs that get fixed in the next release:

1.0 was a disaster, fixed more than a year later in 1.1 under another company...
4.0 was again a disaster, finally fixed in 5.
6 was another ambitious leap, leaving tons of bugs fixed in 7
8 was again ambitious going to 64bit - remember all the times Carrara 8 beta made Mondrian art? If it get's fixed in 9 or 8.5... whatever they call it. *shrug*

Yes, it's overdue, but there was a huge recession, and this Genesis thing.... Some really major bugs still remain that will prevent C from being complete - like the hair attraction to backside polys, you'll never animate dynamic hair and cloth at the same time... it won't work. period. Fenric says his timeline plugins are borked in 8.5.... There were hints that ERC would be built in for the next version.... Whatever happened to that poll we voted for a handful of likely features? I remember one of the "choices" was compatibility with the next gen figure from DAZ... I made fun of it because there was no way we were getting Carrara without compatibility to the next figure - who was right? Me me me. LOL!

Let's hope we get things moving forward again by the end of the month. This wait is sooooo annoying.

I've been saying for quite some time due to the cost of such a protracted developmental cycle DAZ would have to go to C9 to charge full price for the carrara update.

I expect this fabled announcement to be DAZ is going to C9, DAZ has sold carrara, DAZ has abandoned carrara, or DAZ is working with some other app company on a bridge to their app that will be quite reasonably priced; and have little to do with how carrara works.

Now I could make some observational speculations, but we know that is a no no on the DAZ forum. Thing is we are left with nothing but speculations as to what is going on, certainly no one at DAZ is going to keep us in the loop, after all we are just customers and count as little more then the money in our wallets/purses.

I mean there certainly is no reason to keep us informed.

I'm alpha testing a shooter MMO, I'm trying to add my many years of game play experience to the development of the game. I have been telling people right alnog what we have in the alpha is all there will be at release; in 2 months. People of coarse argued with me, telling me I didn't know, more would be added before release, ect. Thursday a dev confirmed there will be no more then rewards/cosmetics added for release.

I expect this fabled announcement to be DAZ is going to C9, DAZ has sold carrara, DAZ has abandoned carrara, or DAZ is working with some other app company on a bridge to their app that will be quite reasonably priced; and have little to do with how carrara works.

I've always agreed with you on those points. They are all the most likely scenarios.

Excuse me?? You're saying Blender does not work even half as good as Carrara?
You know, I don't see the kind of complaining about Blender that there is here,
and I figure there's a reason.

Please don't go overboard!

Apologies.
And it does look like that's what I'm saying, but anyone who knows me better knows that I really don't feel that way at all.
I'm just saying that if Blender is your choice, why did you spend another $$$xxx on Carrara - just to wish it was Blender.

No, I know many people who use and love Blender, and the community driviing it is nothing short of incredible - from the newb to the pros... that's a great following.

One of the things that I notice all the time, in regards to your comment of Carrara complaints, is that there are very few people complaining about Carrara. Very few. Count 'em. One, two... okay, two. :cheese:

The only OTHER time I have ever read a generic "Stay Tuned for an exciting announcement in a few weeks!!" was from a 3D "city builder tool" company that went bankrupt and closed house shortly after slashing the price on their main software.... The announcement was apparently a stall tactic (or well meaning gesture to inform users that they would be making some sort of financial-based decision).... By the time the announcement was made the company was already rumored to be in Chapter11.... There was no follow up announcement.

*IF* there is currently a beta team, then they know if anyone is home or not.... They are prevented by DAZ's NDA from even admitting if they are in the beta, but I'm sure you can guess some of their names.... I can only think of one offhand who is still posting here.

Attempting to scrounge around for scraps of information (even old information) is depressing. I'll keep my little tutorial site up, and continue to try to archive as many Carrara links as possible, but the 2 forums - here and at Cafe, are both owned by DAZ.... Whatever happens, Carrara is in a tight bottleneck. I'm not going to bother speculating about what will happen. Certainly NOTHING is happening right now.... There is no Carrara development team on payroll right now. We have no Carrara manager that I know of....

The announcement in Februrary -- or rather, the announcement that there will be an announcement -- was generic because DAZ doesn't KNOW what they are going to do. They are figuring out how much money and resources they can spare us. When THEY know, they will let us know what the plan is.... DAZ has always done this. They are honest even when their plans go awry.... When they are silent it's because they don't have any answers.